It was not⁠—by George⁠—as he (Down-by-the-Starn) would have him know, for a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come down to that office, and think that he was God Almighty. He (Down-by-the-Starn) had been head of that office for more years than a boy like him could count, and if he thought that when he had finished all his work, he could sit there doing nothing, he did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-Starn), and so forth.

On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the long, mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed, tortoiseshell eyeglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his gold pencil moving down the clauses of his will.

It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious little legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a man’s possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little paragraph in the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with a hundred thousand pounds.